Crime in Pontiac: Dangerous but improving

It’s been almost two years since the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office took over policing in Pontiac; the city’s police force disbanded while Pontiac struggled to balance its finances under a series of state-appointed emergency managers.

Most, but not all, city residents say the sheriff has done a good job but attach no blame to Pontiac’s police department, hampered by budget and personnel cuts before the sheriff took over.

“The Pontiac PD had been whittled down to a handful of officers, they were so outmanned and outgunned I felt sorry for them,” said Jason Nolan in a post on the social media site Facebook.

Said Becky Bauch: “I see a huge difference. I like the changes that has been made. I see police driving through all kinds of neighborhoods and not because they were called neither! Pontiac is not as bad as people make it out to be, and the police are just making it a better place and weeding out the bad. Great job!!”

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But Mary Long says there still needs to be more of a police presence in the city’s downtown.

“Downtown Pontiac has gotten worse in terms of crime since they took over,” Long says. “I have had neighbors move out if the city because of their lack of presence.”

A look at crime rates across southeast Michigan shows rates vary widely from community to community.

Despite some improvement, at least in perception, crime statistics indicate Pontiac remains one of the most dangerous cities in the country, enough to be singled out for assistance by the state along with Detroit, Flint and Saginaw.

To put it in perspective, the long odds of winning the Powerball lottery jackpot are 1 in 175 million. The odds of being a victim of a crime in Pontiac are much shorter.

A special report to the Michigan Legislature earlier in the spring by the Michigan State Police indicates that overall there was one crime committed for every 35 residents for the six months from October 2012 through February.

The categories of crime include drugs, nonviolent crimes of burglary, larceny, auto theft and arson, and violent crimes of murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

The statistics for Pontiac showed one violent crime for every 175 residents, but just one murder for every 10,000 residents during the six months. There was one property crime — burglaries, auto thefts and arsons — for every 63 residents, and one drug-related crime for every 149 residents.

In his special message to the legislature on public safety in March 2012, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder proposed developing a system of “smart justice,” arguing the state can’t prosper unless it tackles crime in its most violent cities.

Out of that special message was created the Michigan State Police Secure Cities Partnership, an effort to provide more services to the four cities, and to graduate more state troopers to assist. Two classes graduated 168 troopers, and southeast Michigan assignments included 35 to the metro Detroit post, six to the Monroe post, 13 to the Flint post, and three to the Lapeer post.

The six-month look at crime rates in the four cities and the report to the legislature was also part of the effort.

Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, a former state lawmaker, says statistics are helpful but often don’t tell a complete story.

“There is an old saying that statistics are like bikinis,” Bouchard said in a recent interview. “What they show is not nearly as interesting as what’s covered. We used to say that in the legislature.

“Someone can come in and give great statistics but you may be missing the whole story,” he said. “So it kind of depends on the report and how you come up with those numbers.

“But it’s good to have reports delivered to any legislative body so you can see progress, they can do trending, they can do some data-driven funding or financing of programs, but you have to have good qualifiers in the data-mining process.”

By the time the sheriff’s office took over, Pontiac had dwindled from a force of 180 officers to about 50. Bouchard hired the 50 as deputies, recalled 13 Pontiac police from layoffs and added another 11 sheriff’s office deputies to boost the force up to 74.

Initially, Bouchard said arrests soared 400 percent because the sheriff’s office policy is to answer all calls while Pontiac police couldn’t respond to all calls and therefore didn’t write reports on all incidents.

Bouchard said the biggest change in Pontiac has been the use of the sheriff’s office policing model.

“We have models and templates that try to maximize the efficiency of each person,” he said. “Pontiac officers were some great officers but they were getting overrun by a process and by the lack of resources.

“More importantly, what they got was a model where we try to maximize each person on the street’s time. So their average time on arrests, being off the street, was cut in half,” he said.

The efforts are starting to make a dent in the city’s crimes, Bouchard said.

“Now, we think we are pushing the real crime numbers down,” Bouchard said. “Universally, both in the neighborhoods and in the business area, people are telling us they feel a lot safer.”